Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communications, and more particularly, to techniques for generating and/or formatting of a Media Access Control (MAC) layer Packet Data Unit (PDU) for communication in a wireless communications system (e.g., 5G or New Radio (NR)).
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communications systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communications with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, power, and/or spectrum). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA).
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). However, although newer multiple access systems, such as an LTE or LTE-A system, deliver faster data throughput than older technologies, such increased downlink rates have triggered a greater demand for higher-bandwidth content, such as high-resolution graphics and video, for use on or with mobile devices. As such, demand for bandwidth, higher data rates, better transmission quality as well as better spectrum utilization, and lower latency on wireless communications systems continues to increase.
The 5th Generation (5G) New Radio (NR) communications technology, used in a wide range of spectrum, is envisaged to expand and support diverse usage scenarios and applications with respect to current mobile network generations. In an aspect, 5G NR communications technology includes, for example: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) addressing human-centric use cases for access to multimedia content, services and data; ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) with strict requirements, especially in terms of latency and reliability; and massive machine type communications (mMTC) for a very large number of connected devices and typically transmitting a relatively low volume of non-delay-sensitive information. As defined in 3GPP TR 38.913, “Study on Scenarios and Requirements for Next Generation Access Technologies,” the target data rate may be up to 20 Gbps for downlink (DL) and/or 10 Gbps for uplink (UL), and the target for user plane latency for some service types (e.g., eMBB) may be 4ms for UL/DL. With the increased data rates requirements in UL (10 Gbps) and DL (20 Gbps), and the reduced latency requirements of 4 ms or less for both UL and DL, it becomes more important to move most of the processing, e.g., million instructions per second (MIPS) intensive activities, close to hardware (HW) acceleration.
Accordingly, due to the requirements for increased data rates and reduced latency, new approaches may be desirable to improve the system design in order to satisfy consumer demand and improve user experience in wireless communications.